TIL: English calendar riots of 1752 are a myth

[siticen]

For generations, there has been no better illustration of the collective idiocy of the crowd than the story of the English calendar riots of 1752. At the trial of Henry Hunt and others for treason in 1820, James Scarlett, the prosecuting counsel, had this to say:

'The ridiculous folly of a mob had been exemplified in a most humorous manner by that eminent painter, Mr. Hogarth. It was found necessary many years ago, in order to prevent a confusion in the reckoning of time, to knock eleven days out of the calendar, and it was supposed by ignorant persons that the legislature had actually deprived them of eleven days of their existence. This ridiculous idea was finely exposed in Mr. Hogarth's picture, where the mob were painted throwing up their hats, and crying out "Give us back our eleven days". Thus it was at the present time; that many individuals, who could not distinguish words from things, were making an outcry for that of which they could not well explain the nature.'

The story of how the mob rose in protest against being cheated out of eleven September days by the calendar reform of 1752 features in numerous older textbooks as a symbol of popular ignorance in the age of Enlightenment, and in more recent ones as an example of the gulf between elite and plebeian perceptions.

Most tales of calendar riots can be traced back to just two sources: a journal conducted by Lord Chesterfield, the parliamentary architect of the reform, and Hogarth, the supposed illustrator of the riots.

It can be asserted with confidence that the calendar riots are a myth.

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